Neeson’s uneven Pursuit

Review Cold Pursuit (R16, 118 mins) Directed by Hans Petter Moland Reviewed by James Croot ★★★

It is Nels Coxman’s (Liam Neeson) worst nightmare. A man of few words, the Colorado snowplough operator is expected to use quite a number of them in accepting the award as Kehoe’s Citizen of the Year.

Comparing the forthcoming evening to facing a firing squad, he insists he’s ‘‘just a guy who keeps a piece of civilisation open’’.

As Coxman prepares for his big night, son Kyle (Michael Richardson) turns up asking to borrow his mother’s car so he can get to his job at the local airport. When neither of them have returned by the next morning, Coxman decides to go looking, eventually finding him in the last place he’d want – the morgue.

The coroner suspects a drug overdose but Coxman is adamant that can’t be true. And when his suspicions that his son was murdered are confirmed by one of Kyle’s work colleagues (who reveals that it was the result of a drug deal gone awry), Coxman decides to dispense a little justice.

An adaptation of the hilarious Norwegian 2014 black comedy In Order of Disappearance (by the same director Hans Petter Moland),

Cold Pursuit just doesn’t quite capture the original’s gritty charm.

Known as Power Idiot in its native country, writer Kim Fupz Aakeson’s unlikely revenge tale felt like a cross between David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence and Guy Ritchie movies like Snatch and RocknRolla.

This seems more desperate to be this year’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, while at the same time coming across like a throwback to 1990s comedic crime thrillers like Smokin’ Aces, Pulp Fiction and Fargo (the film’s final coup de grace is straight out of the Coen brothers’ playbook).

The eclectic cast of characters boast crazy names and quirks and there’s as much emphasis on diversionary dialogue about hotel maids, diets, the misuse of grammar and cultural appropriation as there is on the central action.

Indeed, things seem to get so sprawling that Neeson’s character effectively disappears for the middle third of the movie, while Frank Baldwin’s script focuses on the escalating turf war between two drug dealers.

But although that makes Cold Pursuit more drawn out than it needs to be, it’s not exactly a bad thing because Neeson’s presence is rather distracting – and not just because of the media storm of the past few days.

One of the great things about

Disappearance was the casting of the affable Stellan Skarsgard (Thor, Good Will Hunting) as the unlikely avenging angel. The problem with having one of Northern Ireland’s finest exports in that same role is we know exactly what ‘‘special skills’’ he has and how he can handle himself in a fight.

Still, Cold Pursuit isn’t without its charms. Emmy Rossum’s (TV’s

Shameless) enthusiastic rookie cop is a hoot, there’s a touching scene involving a snowplough catalogue as bedtime reading and a killer oneliner from a flustered luxury hotel receptionist. It just doesn’t deliver the same thrills and chills as the original Scandinavian story.